How far back is the "start" of history in this telling, and (more importantly) why?
The grandparent comment was pointing out that it cost NASA 200bn, and spaceX 15bn.
The parent comment pointed out that spaceX are actually saving money because they already got what nasa spent 200bn on.
My comment pointed out that they aren't just saving money by using NASAs tech, but tech from the Soviet Union as well - suggesting that their savings are far beyond just 200bn R&D
How many billions was that?
This sort of "they're just building on" talk is weird to me, and not really relevant.
What SpaceX has accomplished is astonishing, and no belittling of their accomplishments should be tolerated.
Its unfair to say spaceX did what NASA did on a smaller budget (which is what the comment that kicked off this thread implied) because they DIDNT do what NASA did, and instead got "the stuff that came before" + "the stuff that NASA spent 200b on" + "the stuff from other sources that also cost billions" + the 15b that they actually spent to get where they are.
How can you disagree with that? You may think this discussion is silly - but its DIRECTLY as a response to someone implying that spaceX are achieving what NASA did with less money: https://www.hackerneue.com/item?id=44316227
Not really. You're not talking about technology. You're debating the economics behind it. You're seeing naive fanboys praising SpaceX's costs for the likes of Starship by comparing them to the cost of the SaturnV project, arriving at the simplistic conclusion that Starship is cheaper. This is like comparing your cheap Android phone as being far cheaper than a 1950s UNIVAC. And when the silliness of this specious reasoning is called out, your reaction is to downplay it as "not really relevant"?
That said, you're upset that I said comparing costs isn't relevant? Isn't that the case you're making right now, that the costs cannot be compared, therefore aren't relevant in this discussion?
My tact on non-relevance, is that saying "it was built on another program's tech!" is not relevant, because everything meets that criterion. For example, as I said, the Saturn was built on decades of German research, including war time research during WWII, into rockets. Saturn's US development costs were a fraction of overall rocket research done by the Germans!
So if upthread is going to argue "but it's all built on the Saturn, and free knowledge!", then the same argument can be carried further back, thus negating this argument. Why?
Because it makes the Saturn cost trillions.
Not even just NASA. SpaceX are building on technologies that originated from both sides of the iron curtain (and beyond)